1. It Ain't Easy Bein' Green 2. Hot Wheels 3. Details, Details 4. Sound Blaster 5. Road Test 7. 2010 Snowball Rally 8. Engine Woe/Getting Even Chapter 8, Engine Woe/Getting Even
August 2010Engine Woe
I lucked into a 1970 Imperial 440 engine and transmission before I found the actual car. Knew I was going to do the project, so paid multiple thousands of dollars to my long-time buddy and shop owner Glenn. He's been building engines for decades, and he's always been good to me.
Not this time, and boy did I get stung!
Chrysler con-rods grip the wrist pin, removing the need for C clips or other retainers. The way that they are worked is that the wrist pin is pressed out. Reinstallation happens by heating the end of the rod to cherry red, expanding it, and then slipping the cold wrist pin into the enlarged opening, which then closes down and clamps once it cools.
Unless you're dealing with a lazy engine builder who does not check tolerances. Then you have a floating wrist pin, which is undesirable.
I took the breather cap off of the engine while it was running, and noticed vapor huffing in and out of the opening. This is not right on a recently rebuilt engine, and indicates that air that is supposed to be compressed in the cylinder is leaking past the rings. I presumed that I had a broken ring and pulled the engine.
When I got the crank and pistons out, everything looked OK and I was baffled. Convinced that I'd made an error and had just disassembled a perfectly good engine, I pulled out my cylinder hone to gently scuff the sides of the cylinders to remove the light glaze that had started to form -- in there anyway.I was quite surprised to see the hone highlight two vertical, slightly off-center gouges in cylinder #8. They were fairly deep, as far as cylinder gouges go, and I was stumped for awhile, until I pressed on the wrist pin and was surprised to see it slide freely from left to right.
These gouges were the passages which were allowing the compressed air/fuel mixture to escape and huff out the vent on the top of the engine.
I stripped the rest of the parts off of the engine and took it to Glenn, who pulled the chicken-shit move of the year when he said that his engines only had a 12 month/ 12,000 mile warranty. When I brought him the engine, he knew the story about not having a car for it, and when I took it to him, I'd only put 6,000 miles on it in 3+ years. I used to think that mileage was what wore out an engine. Apparently workmanship degrades internally if you store a freshly built engine, and the time limit is there to save the builder from his own mistakes if the owner doesn't catch it in time. Glenn's now at the top of my shit list, and I've moved on.
The kicker here was that I found a machine shop much closer -- it's a small, hole in the wall place run by two guys who really seem to know what they're doing, and they boiled, bored, sleeved, and redid the cam bearings (which got eaten by the caustic cleaner in the boiling process) for $195.00.
$195 was all that it would have taken Glen to fix this, and he decided that he'd rather not. Just not how I do things, but OK. At least it was only $195 and allowed me to find a better shop!
So, with the sleeve in place, the engine has been reassembled, and is presently awaiting installation.
I was recently given the nastiest, dirtiest engine I've ever seen -- a 413 that was caked in layers of gook and had really horrible sludge in the pan as well. That's it on the floor behind the 440 after going through the rinse & spin cycle in the machine shop's washer. Cost was $200 for that and sand blasting the cast iron parts, and I'll do new bearings, gaskets, valves, and rings for a shade-tree rebuild on the cheap. I can't get over how clean that thing got, and how good it looks now!
During the down time, I found some new aluminum valve covers that go nicely with the 1966 valve cover stickers I had floating around, and since I'm cherry picking parts from other years (steering wheel, engine & trans, etc.)...
The interesting problem that I had here was that the HP exhaust manifold on the passenger side stuck up and prevented installation of the much more boxy covers. I wound up using a file and a grinder to knock the weld beads off of the cover, and I shaved a millimeter or two off of the bulge in the casting that was closest to the cover. I can slip a piece of paperboard box from an oil filter between them. Hopefully this won't be a problem for the aluminum with such close proximity to the heat of the manifold.
You can also see a new freeze plug at the back of the 906 head there? Another item I got to correct. Glenn's leaked and the one on the other side was dripping coolant onto the starter. Kept it cool, at least.
